


oxygen

by agonies (Hyb)



Series: isolated incidents [4]
Category: Big Bang (Band), GOT7
Genre: Blindfolds, Body Worship, Camping, Hiking, Informal Negotiations, M/M, Rock Climbing, Spanking, Strangers to Lovers, Tent Fucking, Terrible Cell Reception, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-10 08:55:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19903111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyb/pseuds/agonies
Summary: The fact is, Seunghyun isn't meant to be here, and no guide with a nice ass is going to make him forget it.





	oxygen

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt:  
> Jackson: a rock climbing instructor  
> Seunghyun: a CEO taking his company rock climbing for “team building”  
> cue lusting and body worship

One rule has always served him well. Seunghyun will approve any number of expenses for employee enrichment, and Daesung will handle the actual enrichment of the employees. This arrangement works out for several reasons. First, the company maintains its annual ranking on the “Best Places to Work” lists that help them attract top talent in the city. 

Second, Seunghyun is never forced to leave the climate controlled serenity of his office. 

With no consideration for the latter, Daesung eloped to Kyoto five days ago, and has been blissfully unapologetic over the phone no matter how gruesome and elaborate Seunghyun’s threats. Eventually, when Seunghyun broke and resorted to obscene bribes — he did not beg and Daesung can’t prove otherwise — the traitor beamed at him through the screen, whispering so as not to wake his wife.

“It’ll be good for you,” he grinned.

When foreign investors visit, Seunghyun will send private cars to show them the sights, where to eat, and he touts the vastness of their national park sprawling north of the city like a crown. He doesn’t go there himself, of course, but the brochures are very compelling. Hiking trails, sunny peaks, picturesque Buddhist temples. 

Now, only an hour from the office by bus, he has no signal. He might as well be dead. 

The bus was all noise, the smell of coffee and someone’s mung beans, but respectfully no one sat beside him as he glowered over his dwindling bars. 

When he dropped off his dog with Jiyong that morning, he had the nerve to drink in Seunghyun’s expression and cackle.

Only two nights on their retreat, he reminds himself. The campsite has been assembled ahead of them, wooden foundations lifting pristine grey tents off the ground. Each contains two cots and electric lights, outlets, netting for insects. Seunghyun will sleep alone, he reminded the company’s representative via email. No exceptions.

There’s a wooden building up the hill with showers and toilets and undoubtedly spiders, he thinks, slapping a mosquito from his neck. It’s just barely cresting autumn, a long dry heat, and the insects haven’t been discouraged. 

As the employees settle, milling around him as if he were only a tree stump, Seunghyun lifts his phone and sets up the hill for a signal. He’s already perspiring under his sweater, itching with it, and he rounds the building with no luck. Three men are pitching a larger tent and unloading a van emblazoned with the travel agency’s logo. ( _We’re an adventure company,_ the representative had insisted over email.)

The guides are young and sunbrowned, with bare arms and caps to shield their eyes from the light. Young enough that Seunghyun might feel nervous about their qualifications, if nerves were a weakness he allowed himself.

“Where can I get a signal?” he yells down in frustration, but he’s too far, one of the guides pausing and lifting a hand to his ear.

They’re all foreign, he thinks as he strides closer. Chatting in English between themselves. Their clothes are plain and faded with use, but one wears a very, very expensive watch. Maybe that’s no surprise. Seunghyun had wealthier friends at university who took years off for recreations like this, seeing the world without consequence before their real careers began.

“I can’t check my email,” Seunghyun complains, and he thinks that at the office he’d sound stern. Just now, well. Not his finest moment. 

_Every time,_ one of them sighs in English, then plasters on a bright grin. _Mark_ is scrawled over the breast of his shirt in permanent marker. He switches seamlessly back to Korean. “Yeah, the signal gets spotty out here! I’d switch your phone to airplane mode so it doesn’t drain your battery, you’ll want that for pictures. If there’s an emergency you can use one of our satellite phones.”

A second guide has paused, lingering over a heavy tote he hauled from the van. They all have very nice arms, Seunghyun notes despite himself, but this one wears his shirt slashed down the side and the way he’s inclined, the fabric hangs clear of a densely fleshed chest. A ladder of muscle runs down his ribs.

The third, with _Bam_ written across his shoulders large enough to see from space, pauses and elbows the second. _Keep it in your pants,_ he laughs at the second guide, quick and light in English, and in the beat of incomprehension it must seem as if Seunghyun doesn’t understand them at all. 

_I’m just looking,_ the other shrugs, and it’s true. He’s looking at Seunghyun. 

“I’m Jackson,” he says, tugging off his cap and carding his hair back from his face. There are times and places Seunghyun would consider a move that practiced to be an invitation. “My car’s just down at the nearest rest area. I can give you a ride down the mountain, if you need it. You’re the CEO, right? Must be important messages.”

Mark turns away, but not before Seunghyun glimpses the exasperated rolling of his eyes.

“Mister Choi is fine,” Seunghyun says. It comes out lower than he intends, a touch hoarse. Jackson’s tounge flashes out to wet his lower lip. He’s not even pretending to work now, thumbs hooked through his belt loops. It does wonders for the flex of his triceps, as he undoubtedly knows. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Their afternoon hike is only three hours, up to a scenic view of the forest just beginning to glimmer orange and gold among the green. Seunghyun tosses off his sweater for the flannel shirt beneath, and still he’s plastered with sweat, feels it streaming down his spine. Chaerin has her subordinates competing in some unspoken race for her approval up the switchback paths, while Hyuna and Jessi loiter in back of the group with Seunghyun, their arms linked as they confer rapidly and pick their way up the slope with the indifference of women accustomed to towering heels.

He’s just about to make this a productive afternoon and ask Namjoon for more details from his upcoming quarterly report when Chaerin whips around, a bag of trail mix in one hand, and chucks a dried apricot at Seunghyun’s head with devastating accuracy.

“No work, loser!” she shouts down, heedless of a dozen employees between them flinching at how their boss is addressed. This is why you should never hire your friends, he reflects, with a menacing pause for Daesung. You can’t fire them when they annoy you.

“My boss said you weren’t the one who signed up for this trip,” Jackson remarks some time later, at Seunghyun’s elbow, light enough on his feet that he didn’t notice his approach. His lungs are, at the moment, demanding most of his attention. He feels every pack of cigarettes he’s smoked since he was fifteen in the strain for air. 

“No,” Seunghyun coughs back, fumbling a button open at his throat. It eases his breath, but not by much. At university a friend had suggested a summer spent backpacking, but she lost interest after Seunghyun bent her brother over the kitchen table in what they thought was an empty house. He never much saw the appeal, anyway. Museums have more compelling sights and aircon besides, and after a misspent youth scraping his knees on pavement to suck off pretty boys in the back of his awful little car, he appreciates the luxuries of a hotel bed and a hot shower. 

Jackson has, unprompted, launched into a bright rehearsed speech over the geological history of the area, something about granite. It’s impossible to discern the full shape of him, his shorts baggy and held on with cord, but his calves are solid and bode well for his thighs. He looks strong enough to brace himself and take it, and if Seunghyun weren’t seeing black spots at the edge of his vision he would feel some sort of way about that image. 

“Hold up,” Jackson says suddenly, snagging him off the path by an elbow. His hand is hard, even through Seunghyun’s sleeve. “I need some water.” And he’s almost convincing about it, taking a long swig from his bottle and surveying the scenery like Seunghyun hasn’t sagged back against the stone to catch his breath. After a minute or so he holds the bottle out, and Seunghyun drains half without considering where his mouth might have been.

“So why are you here, Mister Choi?” Jackson asks as the group continues on without them, smaller and smaller as they advance up the path. He sounds so genuine about it that it nearly negates the naked flirtation in how he curls his tongue around Seunghyun’s name.

What would Daesung say. He’s so dizzy he can’t remember. The altitude, he thinks distantly. “Someone has to be,” he mutters. “They need to see the leadership engaged.”

“Is that why nobody talks to you? That sweet sweet engagement?” Jackson wonders. The way he’s waiting with his lips parted, Seunghyun can see the tip of his tongue tracing his teeth. His sunglasses are tinted, not too dark, and they don’t hide the shine of his eyes. 

“Now that’s not true.” His wind is coming back to him, his voice steadier. “Chaerin threw fruit at me.”

“Good for her,” Jackson snorts, clapping him on the shoulder. “We should get moving, unless you’d rather roll downhill and check your email. You gonna make it up there, big guy? Want me to carry you?”

And Seunghyun thinks _I’m fine_ and he thinks _I’d rather see you holding your knees to your ears_ but what he says is, “There’s going to be a merger.”

Jackson’s shifts his weight, squinting. “Um. Okay?”

“With one of our competitors.” Seunghyun is still holding the water bottle. He swallows another mouthful but his tongue feels too heavy. “Smaller, like us.” A hundred and eighty employees small, he means, not thousands like the corporations that want to gobble them up. “Nobody knows yet.”

Considering, Jackson shoves his hands in his pockets and shoots a glance up the trail. The group is out of sight, just distant voices carrying on the wind. “So why are you telling me?”

Something tightens in Seunghyun’s throat. “Because I don’t know if I can keep everyone.” Three months of remote meetings and what feels like three hours of sleep a night ever since. “I’m trying.” And telling the last person in the world who would care. Projecting depth and understanding onto the lunk who’s just here to haul them up the mountain. Futility is sour in his mouth.

“We’re too far behind,” he mutters, and Jackson doesn’t stop him from scowling up the trail at double time.

The guides bring them to rest at a high flat clearing. The afternoon sun has burned off the mist and the valley below is clear, widening blue shadows where the light can’t reach. Chaerin shoots him a brief, speculative glance, but otherwise his arrival goes unremarked. Yoongi hasn’t pushed anyone off the mountain, he reasons, or there would be screaming by now.

Daesung would be winding up to a motivational speech, or cracking jokes, whatever he does to wring the most out of these team building exercises. He always types up a report riddled with hasty spelling errors after these events, highlighting areas of growth and which teams revealed tensions. Seunghyun reads them. 

He knows every one of his employees by name, by personality profile and number of dependants. It occurs to him, watching the hole in the air where Daesung ought to be, that they might not be aware.

In the yawning openness where the rock meets the sky like a broken jaw, he feels very small, and lost.

And worse, now someone knows it.

There are tables inside the tent for supper, breaking the thirty attendees into clusters. Under the strings of electric lights Bam — the only name he’ll answer to — doles out beer and single serving bottles of wine. Seunghyun takes two, and it’s a cheap red but just now he’d drink anything. A cigarette would improve the taste beyond words, but after wheezing up the mountain his pride won’t let Jackson catch him at it. 

His table is nearest the open flaps of the tent, beyond which Mark and Jackson are grilling meat and skewers of vegetables, a huge vat of rice simmering. 

_What kept you?_ Mark is asking, pitched a little too loud over the fire.

Jackson snorts. _What do you think?_

 _You’re the most predictable person I know,_ Mark shoots back. _Don’t mess around with the boss, come on._

 _What can I say, I’ve got the vision,_ and there’s a whoop, some small scuffle behind Seunghyun that he can’t see. Namjoon and Jennie are at his table, each fluent and awkwardly aware that Seunghyun is as well. Their round, panicked eyes are locked in dread when Jackson adds _I know a big dick when I see one!_

Mark grumbles something too low to catch and they’re quiet a spell.

 _Nah, he’s just a smoker,_ Jackson adds, nonchalant. _I’ll keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn’t have a heart attack._

 _Just don’t_ give _him one,_ Mark snaps back, then hollers to the tent for their supper.

After a brisk shower, he finds Jackson taking inventory at one of the vans. His cap is gone, his sunglasses hanging off the back of his head in the fading light, and in another time and place Seunghyun might be wearing a favorite suit instead of a sweatshirt and dirty shoes, and he could enjoy the way Jackson looks like the sort of comics he used to hide under his bed when he was young, every hard line balanced by a voluptuous curve. 

In another time and place, he might do any number of things to hear a cocky mouth like that beg. But that’s his ego talking. Jiyong would remind him he doesn’t get out as much as he used to, that his wild evenings now are two glasses of wine and bed with his dog curled behind his knees. Whoever he’s imagining biting marks into Jackson’s throat, Seunghyun isn’t living his life anymore.

“You said you could give me a ride.” 

Seunghyun’s voice might have dipped lower than he intended again — he’s only human, especially where men with hard shoulders and soft mouths are concerned — but he thinks Jackson isn’t immune, either. His tone is deeper than Seunghyun has heard yet when he answers in the affirmative, just wait ten minutes.

Jackson’s headlight bobs on the beaten path as they trek downhill. He’s quiet, which strikes Seunghyun as odd after only one day. He’s so loud with the others that Seunghyun could often hear him over the rest of the group like a gong. Making Chanyeol laugh so hard he startled the nearby birds, or hurling himself in a flip so sudden that Chaerin shouted _bitch_ in shock.

Seunghyun checks his phone on the slope, but there’s still no signal. It feels like an anchor in the palm of his hand.

“You can talk about my endowments but not to me?” Seunghyun shoots into the dusky haze, and Jackson’s head jerks sharply, his beam of light jolting up into the trees.

“Your what?” His Korean has been informal from the start, and just now it rankles.

 _I’d appreciate if you didn’t mention what I told you,_ he forces himself to say instead of asking Jackson if he’d like to test his theory, preferably face down and ass up. 

Jackson’s silent a beat, rounding a bend in the dirt road to a small shelter and a few parked cars. The one he unlocks is an Audi, dusty from the road but sleek and black and new, and the leather interior is immaculate. 

_I don’t even know who you are,_ Jackson says, twisting a knob and allowing a moment for the windshield wipers to clean the film of dirt away. _And neither does Mark. Why should I tell him when he wouldn’t even care?_

“As for the other thing,” he continues with deliberate clarity as the car rumbles slowly down the uneven road, “I know I’m right.”

There are no disastrous emails waiting for him at the base of the mountain, no red alerts from his lawyer. Jiyong even sent a picture of his dog wearing a hideous hat, which Seunghyun promptly forwards to all his nieces and nephews. 

Still jangling with nerves, he calls his assistant, and Sehun very nearly conceals his irritation at the hour. No there haven’t been any urgent calls, yes he knows how to reach the guides, did Seunghyun think that Daesung handled all the logistics for this trip himself? 

“Are you having fun?” Sehun finally asks, strained and unconvincing. He could count on one hand the number of times Sehun has asked him a personal question since he was hired. Phenomenal assistant, the best. The last time someone sent Seunghyun the wrong reports before a meeting, Sehun made them cry.

“Excellent engagement,” he says crisply. “Go back to your date, I can hear the restaurant.”

Jackson is leaning up against the hood when he strides back, hands in his pockets.

"Nothing on fire?"

"What business is your family in?" Seunghyun shoots back. "Since we're getting to know each other so well."

"Shipping," Jackson shrugs. "Exciting stuff. You always get this bitchy when people see you upset?"

Seunghyun doesn't say, the last person to see me upset was my dog, and before that Jiyong on my thirtieth birthday, when I thought the startup would fall through and I puked wine all over his bathroom, which is not the sort of thing that's supposed to happen to you at thirty.

"My family runs a restaurant," he says instead. "It's cheap and close to the cram schools, so they stay busy. I put myself through school while I was waiting tables."

"Good job," Jackson says slowly. "Guess that answers my question."

"Excuse me?"

"Bitchy," he nods. "It's okay. Some of my best friends are control freaks, I know how you get. Besides, you're deflecting all over the place. You want to get mad 'cause I have a job waiting for me and you can't promise that to anybody right now.

"Tell me this," Jackson presses on when Seunghyun is quiet, his jaw tight. "Your company's in good shape, right? These trips aren't cheap, not for thirty people. You're not worried about shutting the lights off anytime soon. So this merger you're all knotted up about, you're thinking of the future. You want to know you can take care of all those people counting on you next year, and the year after that. You want a plan."

Something about the _take care_ sets his teeth on edge. "I'm not their father."

"You sure? I hear dads are supposed to be the remote types who ball everything up real tight and then they die before you ever get to know them. I mean, not _my_ dad," he adds with a joking shudder at the thought. "But I've been living here a while and you guys are super tense. That can't be good for you."

"We should get back," Seunghyun says eventually. "Don't you have a job to do?"

He doesn’t sleep well, though the cot in his tent is more comfortable than he expects. He hears voices gathered around the fire, and laughter. He misses his dog.

The camp is quiet, the grass wet with dew in the faint dawn, but he finds the guides already circling the dining tent, doling out protein bars and dried fruit to the empty tables while the tall pot simmers over a fire. He must mumble something coherent, or maybe it’s the shadows under his eyes without the concealer he prefers for work days, but Bam has a hot cup of coffee for him before he’s even seated. He drinks it so fast he burns his tongue and tastes nothing, but the world goes clearer at the edges. 

Absent, half awake, he keeps twitching to check his phone out of muscle memory. Maybe Jackson notices, or maybe his eyes are always like that in the early morning, heavy and watchful. 

Their morning hike is unhurried, the guides reminding them to conserve their energy as Mark shoots a wary look at Seunghyun and Jackson towards the rear. He hires well, he thinks. His employees are at ease with each other, someone is always laughing, the procession breaking into natural clusters of friends. The hike is only a means to an end, pausing at outlooks for pictures and chatter, but Seunghyun doesn’t fight for breath so much as the day before.

The rock face they’ll be climbing is clear of crowding trees, glints of metal already bolted into the stone catching the light. Granite, Jackson wouldn’t shut up about the quality of the granite. 

Mark is beginning to explain the mechanics of the gear they’ll be using, reminding them to check the straps on their helmets after the hike, while Jackson and Bam adjust their harnesses. Jackson peels off his shirt, which seems like the most impractical thing a person could do before rubbing up against a wall of rock, dusts his hands in a cloud of chalk, and launches himself up the face.

Clearly they know this route well, and Jackson moves up the surface without hesitation. His bare back shifts effortlessly, arms straight as beams while he swings a leg up to meet the center of his gravity and push himself higher. The harness frames and squeezes his ass unmistakably, sitting at the seam of thick, flexing thighs. If the view weren’t demanding the thrilled, giggling attention of the group, Seunghyun would upbraid himself for staring so obviously.

Maybe he thinks of the weight of all that flesh in his hands, how his fingertips would have to dig in to hold Jackson open and drill him on his tongue, but he doubts he’s the only one.

There are high quality videos for that, men with bouncing asses and strong thighs getting rubbed down in oil and opened up while their eyes flutter back in bliss, but thinking so only reminds him of his phone, and all the messages he can’t check, and dread hooks his gut sideways. 

Watching Bam feed climbing rope through a mechanism secured to his harness, it takes an idiot moment for Seunghyun to realize that until Jackson clips the rope to the first anchor in the wall, he has nothing holding him from a fall. They watch him climb higher, so high Seunghyun can’t see the flash of his teeth when he grins, fastening the lead rope along the way.

When he descends, Bam is yanked off his feet by the weight, and Seunghyun starts forward reflexively before their skinny guide lifts up his legs and swings, bouncing his soles against the rock to absorb the momentum, all nonchalance.

Jackson and Bam repeat the process further down the rock face, a more sheer incline where Jackson has to crimp his hands tightly into shallow divots for purchase. Mark is explaining something about how to utilize the stiff soles of their hiking boots like Jackson is, the best angle for maximum grip, and Seunghyun very nearly hears him. 

The group breaks down into clumps of seating, unhurried, some at the beginners’ incline, others at the steep face Jackson is descending. Only a few line up to try first. Daesung always comments in his reports on their ability to manage themselves with minimal oversight. 

At the first route, Changkyun is volunteering as belayer, likely as an opportunity to keep both feet on the ground. Shucking out of his harness, Jackson locks eyes with Seunghyun, and his grin is so sudden and smug it thrills a warning up his spine.

“Mister Choi wants to belay,” he calls, loud enough that everyone stares. “Isn’t that what you said, sir?”

Jooheon, who had already lined up to try the more challenging pitch, pales.

“Of course,” Seunghyun grits out. “Looking forward to it.”

In deference to the heat, Seunghyun wears a long-sleeved cotton shirt like he would in the weight room, here tucked into his jeans. The air passes through the fibers too readily, agitating his skin, and he feels half naked. Moreso when Jackson steps in close. 

Jackson takes his time cinching Seunghyun into the harness, sparing a near silent whistle and a wink for how the weight of his package hangs between the straps. There’s faint perspiration over his lip, and in the divot of muscle between his pectorals, forced into Seunghyun’s view as he lingers so close adjusting the harness and its hardware, a carabiner clipped just over his groin, tugging the straps hard and beaming at Seunghyun’s warning look. 

Still, he’s all business when teaching Seunghyun how perform a safety check, how to handle the rope and control the tension for the climber. Bam is doing the same for Changkyun nearby, while Mark reviews with the group how to communicate safely. On belay, belay on, climbing, climb on.

Jackson is chewing a bite of dried beef, the spices sharp on his breath, and repeating the same mantra of pull, brake, under, slide, guiding Seunghyun’s hands over the rope until he catches the rhythm of it, his guide hand and brake hand secure as he pulls slack. He tells him how to brace himself to catch a fall, that the rig will take the weight.

“And what do we do?” he grins after a gulp of water.

“Keep our brake hand on the rope,” Seunghyun repeats, and it comes out amused rather than annoyed at the condescension. 

“You’ll want to encourage them,” Jackson adds unexpectedly. “Get that sweet engagement. Isn’t that why you’re here?” 

“I’m here because someone eloped,” Seunghyun says flatly.

“Lucky me,” Jackson croons. “So. If you see them bunching up their arms, tell them to let it hang straight. Won’t tire out that way, your skeleton takes the weight. Tell them to use their legs, don’t rush. Tell them not to face the wall dead on too much,” he adds, and claps Seunghyun’s hands to his own hips without warning. “Not like this,” he smirks, watching Seunghyun watch how tightly his waist and hips meet before the swell of his ass. His palms are rough with chalk over Seunghyun’s knuckles. “Remind them to angle away from the wall a bit. Straight arms, happy arms.” He tugs one of Seunghyun’s hands up to the hard dip of his waist and demonstrates, muscles flexing under skin as he twists so one hip is angled towards Seunghyun and his torso angles away. His body is so firm it feels like he’s been corseted into his own skin.

“Safety check,” Seunghyun snaps, and Jooheon reluctantly edges closer and jangles Seunghyun’s gear until Jackson snorts and tells him it’s all good, looking like he’d rather be standing in a volcano when Seunghyun reaches down and returns the favor.

Jooheon chalks his hands and climbs, laughing awkwardly at first, and Jackson is there at Seunghyun’s elbow minding the slack in the rope, repeating the _pull, brake, under, slide,_ absently in English under his breath. 

“Good, now straighten your arms,” Seunghyun calls up, because that’s all he knows and soon he worries Jooheon might be out of ready earshot. But the gear is solid, and Jooheon has sturdy legs, and when it’s time to descend he whoops while his feet push off the rock. Jackson’s yell of encouragement is louder, and more of the employees join in from behind them, but it’s Seunghyun holding the rope while Jooheon lets himself fall.

There’s a moment that seems to stretch, slow and thick like oil paint, where Jooheon is hanging out over nothingness and Seunghyun’s hands are steady. He doesn’t have a glance to spare for Jackson, but he can feel his smugness like a banked fire. 

In the end he belays for Chaerin, for Hyuna and Yoongi too, the latter scuttling up the rock like a spider, before Jackson tells him to take a break and let someone else get their trust exercise on. While they sit, sharing water and spicy dried squid, Seunghyun asks Yoongi about the book he and Namjoon were fighting about on the bus. 

On the hike back to camp they take a different route, winding past caves and a shaded pond, and Namjoon defends his views on the book in turn. The novel sounds tedious, some series Seunghyun has never heard of, but Namjoon has warmed to the topic in earnest and he lets him ramble. He’s not sure when the conversation veers toward art, but Hyuna joins them, and by some sorcery he can’t recollect her anecdotes about art school lead Seunghyun to the campfire that evening, nursing his single serving of wine and recollecting, with equal parts chagrin and dramatic flair, how he and Jiyong met at university. 

There was only a small fire, and one stolen chicken, but he’s listened to Jiyong’s retelling enough over the years to do it justice, he thinks.

After a spell he glances over his shoulder, expecting to see Jackson with the other guides, but he isn’t there.

He doesn’t see Jackson until after nightfall, the beam of his headlamp crossing Seunghyun’s flashlight as he picks his way down the slope from the showers to his tent. Rather than shine the light in Seunghyun’s eyes, he flicks it off and twists the band around his wrist. He keeps pace naturally, as if they had an agreed upon destination.

“I don’t need a ride tonight,” Seunghyun ventures with only a distant pang of guilt. If there were an urgent message, Sehun would find a way to reach him. Sehun once faked an allergic reaction to shrimp just to extricate Seunghyun from a thorny business lunch. 

“Cool,” Jackson nods, faint in the dim. “I didn’t say you could have one.”

Seunghyun stops walking, and Jackson rounds to face him easily. In the diffused edges of his light, Jackson’s hair is wet. There’s color in his cheeks, spilling down his chest.

“Were you waiting on me to thank you for today?” Seunghyun hears himself, as faraway as the faint drone of insects. His pulse is already kicking with promise, the same steady anticipation he sees in Jackson’s eyes. A droplet of water trails from his temple. “That was cute, but it doesn’t solve anything.”

“Well, so long as I was cute,” Jackson shrugs. He draws a foil packet from his pocket and tears it open between his teeth, but it’s only one of those energy gels the guides carry, a burst of chemical lime smell before he drags the whole packet between his teeth and swallows the contents. “So are you gonna make me follow you back to the city or are we doing this?”

Something hot settles in his gut. “I can’t picture you in the city,” he says lowly, and his reflexes snap the flashlight off before Jackson shoves up into him and bites his chin. Seunghyun feels the advantage of his height and reels him back, fisting a hand in his wet hair, grinning madly at the groan of frustration that answers him.

“After you,” he says, and Jackson wastes no time.

In the tent, by the dimmest light the electric lantern will offer, Jackson kicks off his unlaced boots and socks and dumps out his pockets. Energy gels, condoms, a bottle of lube. Not a small one, either. 

“Excuse me,” Jackson laughs at his incredulous brow, already struggling to keep his voice down. The other tents aren’t so far away. “I don’t judge how you pack and you brought a sweater in a heat wave.” He’s yanking his shirt over his head, the hard lines of his abdomen bunching and shifting, and if Seunghyun has ever been so bloodthirsty to fold a man in half he can’t remember it. “Show me what you’ve got, big guy.”

He unbuttons his shirt slowly, gratified at the dark hungry weight of Jackson’s eyes following his hands. He lets it hang open and Jackson is quick to touch, pawing at Seunghyun’s stomach, not as defined as it once was but still lean with effort. Unlike the rest of him, Jackson’s hands are very dry and smell like rubbing alcohol, calluses rasping pleasantly. 

“Nice,” Jackson grins. “And you’re what, forty? I’m impressed.”

Instead of taking the bait — he’s thirty-six, and forty is a landmark he’s put off contemplating — he hums. “If that’s what does it for you.” Jackson opens up for another kiss, easy and wet, sighing into his mouth when Seunghyun grips a rough handful of his ass and hauls their hips flush together. “You like that I’m older?” 

“My friend calls it a competence kink,” Jackson agrees, distracted, one hand kneading Seunghyun’s shoulder through his shirt, rubbing up into the cradle of Seunghyun’s pelvis to feel where he’s filling out, pulsing when Jackson sucks wetly at the curve of his neck and drags Seunghyun’s other hand to his ass as well. He’s high and tight with muscle but so thick he has to splay his fingers to hold him. He spreads him through his clothes, forcing his cleft wide, and Jackson bites down to muffle the strangled, wanting sound he makes. Seunghyun’s blood beats at the bitten spot, pulses between his legs.

But Jackson is breaking his hold and stepping out of his reach, shaking his head hard as if to clear it. For a moment, unease flashes over him, goosebumps fleeting in the lingering warmth of the evening. If he’s crossed a line, he wasn’t paying close enough attention. 

“I had a plan,” Jackson chuckles, rubbing the heel of his hand over his dick through his shorts. “Just, got distracted. Been thinking about it all day. You up for it?”

Seunghyun waves a dismissive hand over himself, his erection distending his jeans, as if to say, _clearly._ The worry fades. Just now, he’ll take anything Jackson offers, though if he wants Seunghyun’s ass there’s an issue at hand regarding hygiene and comfort and the fifteen years since Seunghyun tried it last. The fact that he’s entertaining the notion at all is, disorienting.

“I’ve been thinking about how maybe you have trouble believing people can trust you,” Jackson says, sparing a scorching glance for Seunghyun’s bare skin before he reaches back into his pocket and draws out a scrap of fabric. “I’m all about practical demonstrations.”

His meaning becomes clear when he unwinds a strip of black and ties it over his own eyes with a flourish, pausing to ruffle his hair so it doesn’t pinch. “Yeah?”

Seunghyun swallows. It takes a moment. “Alright.” Jackson sinks to his knees on the woven rug, waiting, one hand hanging in the air to wrap over Seunghyun’s thigh when he steps into reach.

On his knees he butts his face into Seunghyun’s stomach, his hip, mouths the shape of him through his jeans and groans when Seunghyun’s cock presses harder against the seam. He’s got his tongue on the zipper when Seunghyun cups his skull, one thumb tracing the edge of the blindfold where it meets his cheek. It’s worn soft, and he thinks Jackson must have cut it from one of his shirts just for this. In daylight, he might even be able to see through the weave, but not here. 

Just that, the pad of his thumb dragging beneath his eye, and Jackson shivers all over. He parts his lips when Seunghyun unzips, chin tilting up, and he has to stop and appreciate the image. If they knew each other better, if he could even imagine Jackson existing anywhere but here, he would ask to take a picture. His hair is drying in a soft swoop over his brow, and with his eyes covered, his glossy skin and plush mouth, he looks like an expensive dream. 

Another groan when Seunghyun guides the tip of his cock to his mouth, dragging it across thin, satiny skin until Jackson grows impatient and wraps his lips around the head. Seunghyun can’t scold him to be quieter, not when he’s gripping his hair and clenching his teeth at the point of Jackson’s tongue delving into his slit, then flattening to press up beneath the head.

He’s barely using his hands, rolling Seunghyun’s balls in his palm with his fingers curled over themselves, and after a delirious moment leaking onto Jackson’s tongue he realizes why. The calluses again. His palm isn’t soft but his fingers are so rough with use they look wider than they ought to be, hard flat callus running all the way to the tips. Curious, Seunghyun drags that hand up to the base of his cock. Jackson pulls away with a pop just to grin at the way his breath hitches for the loose cradle of his fingers rasping over sensitive skin. 

There’s something worth exploring there, but the dime sized calluses Seunghyun develops lifting weights have a nasty habit of ripping if they get wet too often and he doubts that adding enough lube for a proper jack would do Jackson any favors. 

Jackson is suckling on the head again, kneading Seunghyun’s thigh with his other hand like a pleased cat, and he _whines_ deep in his chest when Seunghyun curls a hand below his ear to nudge him away.

“Stand up,” he says, and Jackson does, unhesitating, sinking back on his heels with natural balance. A hard crease of muscle forms a shelf where his abdomen meets his hip, deeply shadowed in the dim light, impossible for Seunghyun not to trace with his thumbs. He only has to shove Jackson’s loose shorts down another inch to fit each palm perfectly into place. 

“I’m going to undress you,” he adds, oddly formal, and Jackson’s grin is smaller than the ones he’s seen before, tugging at one corner of his mouth. 

“Wish you would.”

The shorts go easily, falling when the first button is unfastened, and Jackson steps out of one leg and then the other without needing a handhold for balance. The muscles in his thighs are _titanic_ , flexing to attention when he adjusts his weight. Jackson can’t see his jaw drop, but he can feel his fingertips dig into the curve running from his high outer thigh up to his hip. The smirk is reason enough to yank his briefs down his legs, transforming to a grunt when his cock meets the air. He’s trimmed everywhere, Seunghyun notes in amusement, an endearing stroke of vanity in line with his preposterous abdominals. 

“You can touch it.” Jackson is feeling blind for Seunghyun’s forearm, nudging him, groaning when Seunghyun sucks on his tongue instead. The chemical fruit flavor is long gone. He tastes like Seunghyun’s skin. 

“I’m sure I could,” Seunghyun laughs into his cheek. It’s easy, laughing, easier still when Jackson kicks at his shin and badgers him to take off his jeans. 

He’s not sure what Jackson gasps when he yanks one thigh up over his own hip, but in any language it sounds like a curse, breathless, his arms flying over Seunghyun’s shoulders for balance. Wrapping an arm tight around his waist forces his spine to arch, forces him to give some of his weight over to Seunghyun. There’s already so much heat building, trapped between skin on skin. His thighs sink a few inches wider, absorbing the pull of Jackson’s body against gravity.

When he kisses Jackson’s neck the sound he makes is smaller, sweeter. Louder, too loud, when he keeps at it, lips soft and wet and then the hard press of teeth. He’s shifting restlessly in Seunghyun’s hold, rubbing a rough hand over the nape of his neck, cock twitching against Seunghyun’s stomach. It doesn’t take much more effort to clench his waist tighter in the crook of his arm, pushing his chest up for Seunghyun to map under his teeth and tongue. He works his nipples over until the tight brown buds are swollen soft and Jackson is gasping for air, fingertips scrabbling through Seunghyun’s hair, hips thrusting so hard chasing friction that he threatens to upend them both. 

“Mister Choi,” he tests, rough and low with urgency beneath the tease. “Daddy? _Hyung?_ ”

“Seunghyun,” he corrects with admirable clarity despite the swoop of heat. Visceral, he imagines Jackson straining to spread his thighs in the narrow backseat of Seunghyun’s awful old car, begging _hyung, please, hyung_ and banging his head back against the upholstery when Seunghyun swallowed around his cock and brought him close to the edge only to ease off and bite bruises into his inner thighs instead.

 _Daddy_ is new. He shouldn’t let himself think of it at all, or he’ll picture Jackson in his clean white sheets at home, where he doesn’t belong, naked and soft with morning and waiting for Seunghyun to lick him open while he sighs and stretches his arms over his head. 

But Jackson is repeating his name back to him, then again, arching back up to bite at Seunghyun’s shirt like it wronged his ancestors. 

“Did you need something?” Seunghyun asks, too warm and too familiar, easing his hold so that one splayed palm steadies Jackson at the small of his back. 

Even blindfolded, he can picture Jackson’s eyes when he laughs. Bright, just like he’s flushed all over, perspiration gathering where he’s pressed into Seunghyun.

He takes direction well, just a palm bearing down on his elbow and he follows when Seunghyun sinks to the rug, settling himself over Seunghyun’s thighs with his cock drawn up tight against his belly, leaking a faint gleam of slick in the dim. He doesn’t touch himself, so Seunghyun strokes up his flanks instead and lets him pull an exaggerated pout.

“You’re beautifully made,” he doesn’t mean to say, because it’s a fine thing to say about a sculpture but a pretentious thing to tell a person. 

But Jackson’s mouth thins with the grin he’s holding back. He laces his fingers behind his skull, biceps bunching, stretching his torso to even more preposterous definition. “You too,” he says, and he sounds genuine. Then he smirks. “Soft hands.” 

And Seunghyun tolerates that, gives him the first grind of his thumb over the flushed head, strokes his fingers down the shaft but doesn’t allow him any grip. Still he bucks readily, gasping loud for the unexpected drizzle of lube onto his cock. He’s so hard, twitching into Seunghyun’s hand. He pumps him until his thighs begin to shake and then leaves him curving slick into the air, smearing a streak of lube up Seunghyun’s stomach when he jerks with a noise of complaint.

Hooking Jackson by the scruff, he pulls him forward so that his chin sits on Seunghyun’s shoulder and he can stare down the supple arch of his back. When he pumps slick over Jackson’s cleft he jerks, then turns and bites Seunghyun’s earlobe hard, and it still can’t cover the eager noise he makes.

Seunghyun grips his thighs wider and Jackson catches on, mumbling wetly into his neck as he twists an arm behind him and gathers up the lube before pressing two fingers into himself.

“How do your calluses feel?” Seunghyun murmurs, watching the tendons flex in his wrist, the first wet sounds as Jackson pants and fucks himself, hips shifting as he rides his hand deeper. So much all at once must ache something terrible, unless he started in the showers, hoping for this. Seunghyun takes hold of his cock again, stroking lazily in the narrow space between their bodies, and that’s all the encouragement Jackson needs to moan and stuff a third finger inside.

“Rough,” he mumbles, distracted. 

The stretch eases, Jackson’s forearm bunching more quickly, every thrust transferring as his shoulder bumps between them. Transfixed, Seunghyun traces the seam where the muscle of his ass meets his thigh, drags up to feel that stretched rim for himself, toying with the edge as Jackson’s fingers press inside. 

“Yeah,” Jackson huffs unexpectedly, his free hand digging into Seunghyun’s hip. “Come on.”

So he wedges his own finger in alongside, a bony grind as he forces himself up between thick knuckles and a vise of heat. Jackson’s breath goes quick and punched out, panting _yeah, yeah_ and biting off a yell when Seunghyun works in a second. He’s electrified into stillness with it, lip caught between his teeth and small, needy sounds escaping through his nose, too full to move. 

“And how does that feel?” Seunghyun demands, so much heat in his chest he can barely breathe. 

Jackson keens back, breathless, and parts his lips, moaning when Seunghyun takes the hint and kisses him. Sloppy, crooked, soaking their chins before Jackson begins to shift his hips minutely against the stretch, his hand shaking where he’s trapped tight against Seunghyun’s fingers.

“Tell me,” Seunghyun murmurs, careful not to move his fingers at all. Another time, another place, he thinks Jackson would beg for his entire fist and Seunghyun would give it to him. He’s never trusted anyone enough to try something like that, but he can nearly imagine it.

 _Big,_ Jackson bites off, thighs spasming. _Good. Need a minute,_ he says, but chokes on a protest when Seunghyun suddenly tugs his fingers free, then hooks the thumb of his dry hand and drags the blindfold away.

In the hazy light Jackson looks _wrecked,_ lashes clumped together wetly, strands of hair plastered with sweat at his temples, his reddened mouth more obscene when paired with the delirious gloss of his eyes. But he’s coming back to himself, blinking through it, expression settling into something bemused.

“Maybe you shouldn’t let strange men do whatever they want to you,” Seunghyun says thickly, and Jackson blinks twice before sighing and easing his own hand free with a brief shudder. His weight settles more solidly across Seunghyun’s thighs and he rubs the open palm of his hand over his own erection, thickening where it had softened slightly.

“Maybe you should listen better.” Jackson rolls his eyes but keeps one hand stroking Seunghyun’s waist beneath his shirt. “I didn't say you could stop. Guess you’ll have to make it up to me.” Up close like this his eyes are unnerving, clear and dark. “Take this off,” he tugs one sleeve, dampened with sweat, and Seunghyun complies, peeling the shirt away and dropping it without a glance. Jackson hums, approving. 

“I like your hands,” Jackson tells him again, and kisses him very slowly, sighing against his teeth when Seunghyun takes hold of his thighs again, thumbs rubbing something like an apology into the muscle. “Can you spank me or do you need a map?” he asks lightly, and Seunghyun’s gathering thoughts dissolve into hissing white noise.

“How hard?” he swallows, and Jackson smiles like he’s said something sweeter. 

_How hard_ is first the stroke of his palm over skin, warming, waiting for the devastating, expectant look Jackson slants back over one shoulder where he steadies himself with his arms folded over the cot, thighs sunk into a wide open stance. Seunghyun’s fingertips hum and he’s barely even touched him. 

_Hard enough_ is when Jackson stops talking, dropping his face to his arms and moaning, arching his spine in invitation as the swing of Seunghyun’s arm mottles his ass and thighs hot red to the touch but not hard enough to bruise, if he were to guess. Jackson has spread himself so open that Seunghyun can see the way his slick hole clenches and unclenches on nothing, his cock hanging heavy and drooling between his legs. Seunghyun sympathizes. Every shameless sound Jackson fails to muffle sends a bolt of heat straight to his groin.

“Baby,” he complains at last, a million miles from tense, boneless and inviting. He’s pillowed his cheek on one bicep, eyes heavy and blissed out, and Seunghyun doesn’t comment on the new endearment. “That was so good, baby. Fill me up.”

The lube is holding up, not drying out, probably silicone. To be sure, Seunghyun hooks both thumbs inside his rim and pries him open, the skin soft and hot and giving, and _that_ has Jackson surging up onto his hands for support, threatening to pin Seunghyun down and ride him like a mechanical bull if he doesn’t fuck him in the next five seconds.

He has kinder things to say when Seunghyun is feeding his cock into him inch by inch, flushed dark through the condom. Things like _knew you’d be good, baby_ and _you’re so hot, fuck_ and Seunghyun doesn’t have the presence of mind to answer when he’s bracing one hand against Jackson’s shoulder and the other at his hip, the words lost to their punched out breaths and the slap of his hips meeting Jackson’s hot skin, the eager grip Jackson’s body has on him, heat and heat and the clench as he throws himself back to meet Seunghyun’s thrusts, one fist pounding the cot when they’re both dripping sweat and Seunghyun finally begins to slam himself to finishing, grinding up so hard with his release that Jackson’s knees leave the ground. 

Jackson finishes in his mouth, chest heaving, eyes screwed shut, and Seunghyun prefers not to swallow but he’s tired and he doesn’t know where to spit anyway.

The cot is too small for both of them, and unlike Seunghyun it’s clear that Jackson is wide awake despite their exertions. But he doesn’t leave. He flops sweaty and too hot over Seunghyun and only rises again, grumbling, to flick off the lantern.

Seunghyun traces his back, the dips of muscle and bone, and Jackson is quiet for so long, his breath gone soft, that he thinks maybe he’s fallen asleep after all.

“You should come climbing again sometime,” Jackson mumbles into his skin. “You didn’t get your turn today.”

“I don’t think we’ll be scheduling another retreat until next year,” Seunghyun says eventually.

“Not for the trust exercises or whatever. Just you.” After a beat of quiet, Jackson opens his eyes and props his chin up to watch Seunghyun’s face. He can just barely see the outlines of him, all those contradictory soft edges. 

“Is that what you do on your own time?” Seunghyun asks in place of an answer. “Climb rocks all day?”

“As much as I can.” He can’t be sure, but he doesn’t think Jackson is grinning, for once. His voice is very steady. “Free solo, for me, but you wouldn’t like that.”

He’s very tired, and he came so hard he briefly forgot where he was. It takes a moment to shuffle a meaning to the words. “You climb without ropes?” 

“Guess you’ll have to come see,” Jackson murmurs, and places a deliberate kiss to Seunghyun’s shoulder in the dark.

He does see Jackson free solo, and it hooks something he’s never felt before up into his chest, some mingling of pride and fear and awe that leaves him breathless on the ground. Jackson doesn’t go too high, by his own reckoning, and he laughs at the expression on Seunghyun’s face.

But this is later, after the merger. After he’s seen Jackson in a tailored suit, seen him biking up the banks of the river and shouting back over his shoulder for Seunghyun to keep up. After Jackson calls him a psycho for never naming his dog and promptly christens her Queenie.

“How was it?” he mumbles into the dark, feeling weight shift in the bed next to him, the humidity of a fresh shower rolling from Jackson’s skin. Work, he means, or the climbs, the people, maybe an impatient call from his mother asking when he’s coming back to Hong Kong.

“Good,” Jackson throws an arm over Seunghyun’s waist and leaves it there. “Better now.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> i make no excuses, i will go down with this nonsense ship and its aesthetic merits
> 
> [curiouscat ](https://curiouscat.me/taeminsgucci)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hyb_jabbers)


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